Epic Games announces new pricing plans for Unreal Engine, game developers can still use it for free

Epic Games has announced new pricing plans for Unreal Engine. This new price plan, which will be applied at the same time as the release of Unreal Engine 5.4 in late April 2024, will help users in the movie industry and other non-game developers generate more than $1 million in annual revenue. Users will pay an annual subscription fee of $1,850 (approximately 270,000 yen) per seat (1 user).

Announcement of Unreal Engine, Twinmotion, and RealityCapture price changes in late April
https://www.unrealengine.com/ja/blog/we-are-updating-unreal-engine-twinmotion-and-realitycapture-pricing-in-late-april

Epic Games announced at the 2023 event 'Unreal Fest' that it plans to introduce a seat-based pricing plan for Unreal Engine.

Following Unity, Unreal Engine is planning price revisions - GIGAZINE

by Sergiy Galyonkin

In this announcement, Epic Games revealed the amount and application conditions of the new price plan. You will be charged only if all of the following criteria are met:

・Companies with annual total revenue of over $1 million
・Not producing games
- You are not creating applications that are licensed to third-party end users and rely on Unreal Engine code at runtime.

With a subscription, you can use Unreal Engine to create works such as:

・Linear content (movies, TV shows, architectural visualizations, graphics for broadcasts and live events, etc.)
Products that incorporate Unreal Engine code at runtime and are not licensed to third parties (such as product configurators for internal or external use)
- Immersive experiences that are not sold directly to individual users (such as theme park rides or interactive walkthroughs of buildings)

In addition to Unreal Engine, this subscription comes with Twinmotion , a visualization tool primarily used in the field of architecture, and RealityCapture , a photogrammetry tool that allows you to create 3D models from photos.

For non-game projects, Unreal Engine is free to use with Twinmotion and RealityCapture if your company has less than $1 million in annual revenue. Above this threshold, you will need to purchase an annual subscription seat for $1,850 USD. (4/9)

— Unreal Engine (@UnrealEngineJP) March 12, 2024

Epic Games is bundling Twinmotion and RealityCapture with Unreal Engine because they have future plans to integrate these products into the Unreal Editor.

Please note that this price change only applies to users of Unreal Engine 5.4 or later, so if you are using Unreal Engine 5.3 or an earlier version, the price change will not be applied until you update.

As mentioned above, prior to this announcement, Epic Games had announced plans to introduce a new subscription plan in October 2023, but around that time, fellow game engine Unity was significantly increasing its pricing structure. The change was controversial.

Unity introduced a pricing system that ``fees are generated every time a game is installed'' and game developers were furious, and ``Unity Plus'', which costs about 50,000 yen per year, also stopped accepting new applications - GIGAZINE

In addition, Epic Games is implementing large-scale layoffs targeting 830 people, or 16% of all employees, in 2023, and CEO Tim Sweeney said, ``We are facing financial problems.'' We had to realize this and act quickly to resolve the issue.'